


Domesticide

by VastDerp



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Domestic, F/F, F/M, Hangover Sex, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Roommates, Shenanigans, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-29
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 01:31:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/pseuds/VastDerp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Game, Sollux Captor and Jade Harley share an apartment, various clothing items, and a girlfriend with a miniature horrorterror in her living room aquarium. </p><p>Hangover sex is pretty much inevitable, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "AAAAAAAAGH! NO! Please god help me! No, I’m being domesticated! Fratricide, matricide, homicide, suicide—domesticide! I’m putting up curtains and screwing in little lights over the sink!” - Henry Rollins

11 o'clock Sunday morning. Weather: blah. Might snow later, but if it does it'll be the kind that blows around on the freeway like crawling white snakes. Indecisive early-winter snow is the worst.

She's on the couch in her acid-green underwear (high cut cotton briefs, no bows, no lace) and a cropped Pink Floyd t-shirt that's more holes than fabric. One tan-pink nipple peeks through a gaping rent where Bec got a claw snagged during a particularly rough game of knock-down-the-human-and-dance-on-her-face. She's clipping her toenails.

Her hair is straight as falling water, untied and loose and wild, and pools on the couch behind her in one long dark sumi brush-stroke. Black as india ink splashed on raw silk, never trimmed, never styled. Cowlicks everywhere. She looks like a fairytale princess fallen on hard times, there on the couch with one small foot folded up into her lap and hunched down over it, clipping away.

She's already put on her glasses but her face is pale and sleep-greasy and he knows she's only been awake long enough to crack open a fizzing can of something poisonous-green and caffeinated, shove a breakfast burrito in the microwave and stub her toe on the coffee table leg. She forgot to hit the start button so he does that before he pours himself some cereal and discovers they're out of milk. He steals the last of her half and half instead, writing it off as a fair exchange for her leaving a clog of hair in the shower yesterday. It looked like a spider and scared the shit out of him until he put his own glasses on. He finds a spoon.

In the living room she's Rapunzel dressed like gutter trash and his heart squeezes a little just looking at her there, all arms and legs and big green eyes squinty with just-woke-up outrage, clipping off the broken bits of her toenails and cussing out the furniture. He wants to flop out on the couch but she's sitting almost in the middle so he throws his feet up on her lap instead. 

"Asshole," she grumbles, "Don't think I'm giving you a pedicure next just because I have the clippers out."

"You're in my spot," he observes. "That makes you my footstool."

"The entire couch is your spot now?" She gives him the Look. 

He shrugs as best he can with one shoulder smushed into couch pillows and almost spills his cereal before he can eat any. "It's Sunday. Be glad I'm awake at all." 

"Mm," she says, and finishes repairing her toe. She knocks his feet off her lap, stands, and brushes little half-moon clippings onto their hardwood floor.

He winces. "I'm not sweeping that up."

She does a little fuck-you dance with her butt almost in his face on the way to return the clippers to the bathroom. He rolls his eyes and eats his cereal and watches the blown-out white of the sky. Still not snowing.

She's back a second later, flopping back down right onto his feet instead of scooting a whole foot down to the other end of the couch. She doesn't weigh much but he gripes about it anyway. Strands of hair cascade down over her shoulders when she leans forward to take her soda from the man-eating coffee table and suck down the last few mouthfuls.

Then she stretches, elbows everywhere, yawning like she has a snake's unhinged jaw, and he watches how her body writhes with the pleasure of just being awake and well-rested. Her ruined shirt rides up and the undersides of her small breasts peek out from beneath. She arches backward until her head touches the backrest of the couch, bends right along the dipped small of her back that's perfect for early morning kissing (unless she plans to sleep in that day, and then there's likely to be an answering swat to the face, which is totally worth it), and relaxes with a sigh.

"Okay," she says, "I'm awake."

"You look like ass," he tells her through a mouthful of stale captain crunch gone all waterlogged. This is how Sollux says _good morning._

"Why are you eating cereal out of the coffee pot?" she asks. This is how Jade asks _did you sleep well?_

" _Someone_ forgot to do the dishes yesterday," he shrugs, and tips the pot back to drink the rest of the mushy cereal. The heavy cream taste of the half and half is pretty good but he thinks he'll hit the store later all the same. 

"The _someone_ was you, fuckass," she reminds him. "Saturday, remember?"

He has no valid retort for this, so he pulls one foot out from under her delightfully warm ass and shoves her sideways with it. _"Mehhh."_

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

He remembers the first time they met, how the first thing she did was the first thing everyone on Earth does when they meet him for the first time: raise the eyebrows, look him up and down, and make a value judgment. He's used to that.

The second thing she did was grab his smaller horns, one in each hand, and use them to yank his head down for a better look. "Oh wow, you've got two pairs!" she said, "I bet that pisses Karkat off." 

It might have been the fact that she was fondling his horns (which surely explained the blushing) or the way she immediately compared him to Vantas so that he came out on top, but either way it was love at first sight.

Or whatever humans call this quadrant. It's the one where the two people live together and play video games all weekend and build little robots together and program them to beat the fuck out of other little robots. Sometimes he walks the dog (or rather, he accompanies Bec during his patrol of this section of his planet, and occasionally convinces him to teleport his shit to the moon or Jupiter or something so he doesn't have to pick it up with a little baggie, seriously, who even came up with that horrible idea?), sometimes they do the laundry, sometimes they work and most every night they sleep.

Sometimes he wakes up in midair blind and convinced he's about to split in two from dying so many times in the game and she pulls him back down into the bed and holds him there like a rock weighing down a fluttering piece of fabric in a high wind until he sleeps again. Other times she wakes up in the middle of the night searching the sheets for the tiny fragile blue planet she's just shrunk by accident and dropped on the bed, and he tells her he put it in the medicine cabinet where it'll be safe and she can put it back to normal when it's not _four in the goddamn morning_ and she says _thanks_ and starts to snore into his armpit.

They don't do the human thing, the gazing into each other's eyes like idiots. Trolls consider that an aggressive gesture and besides, she says it's obnoxious trying to tell which way he's looking and he might be crossing his eyes at her and she'd never know. Sometimes he crosses his eyes at her but she always knows.

Instead, he writes her the stupid puzzle games she likes and hides single frames of human pornography as easter eggs, which she inevitably finds. She makes sure he takes his medication (even though it doesn't work as well on troll lunatics as it supposedly does on human ones) and kicks his ass out of bed when he doesn't want to face the world. 

And they have adventures. She makes toast with his mind honey without asking one lazy summer afternoon, and spends the rest of that weekend observing how the walls are breathing and convinced she can taste the little spicy neutrinos passing through her tongue on their way through the Earth. And then she jumps him right there on the kitchen table, and sex with a human turns out to be just as much fun as it is bizarre and moist and loud and awkward.

He threatens to get the bees to take out a restraining order against her after that and she swears to only eat the mind honey on his wriggling day, and also on that other one where everyone gives their matesprits chocolate. When the trolls first came to Earth he assumed that was when the drones were supposed to come, but it turns out humans just really like to combine candy and fucking.

The other humans visit often, and everyone talks about the game, about how things are going now that it's over. They all have the dreams but it's mostly just a thing that happens, no big deal. Dave hasn't frozen time in months. John's last absentminded tornado was a miserable weak affair that picked up like one cow and even then he had it under control in about ten seconds. Rose is off doing something that involves writing long novels about white-bearded scientists killing each other and getting paid a lot of money, which is either related to her ability as a Seer or to her grimdark evil streak. Sollux is honestly a little afraid to ask. 


	3. Movie Night

Sollux pours a few handfuls of piss-yellow oversized dry grains in a pot with some oil and waits for them to explode from worthless gravel into a pile of the tiny white clouds he can never seem to eat enough of. The little shell bits always get stuck in his new teeth but it's completely worth it because human maize corn is amazing and the whole reason why they beat the game. Obviously.

"Extra butter!" she calls from the couch.

"I am," he rolls his eyes without any malice. This is the call-and-response portion of the maize ritual and is essential to Movie Night.

"No, I mean extra for how much you usually use."

"It's going to be soup, dude."

"Cool. Don't forget the salt."

Sometimes she likes to watch these shitty movies where everything's in black and white and women are forever gliding around and sobbing and all the men have hats. He has yet to see such a hat on an actual human, so this might be what the humans call an "urban fantasy."

He gets through half the popcorn before the first culturally baffling thing happens onscreen, which Jade privately thinks is a new record and proof of her skill as a teacher.

"Why's she smacking him around like a grub?" It comes out in a series of wuffles around a wad of half-soggy popcorn, but Jade has become quite adept at interpreting Solluxese since the day she introduced him to the miracle of snack food.

"She's hysterical," Jade replies. "It's a fifties thing."

"Why doesn't she pop him one?"

"They're in love."

"Yeah, that's why I'm asking."

Jade snickers. "It doesn't really translate." 

"And her chest is really pointy." Sollux observes.

"That's for self-defense against sexual predation."

"No shit?" He looks impressed. "Are yours going to do that when you molt?"

"If I'm lucky," she shrugs. "Shut up and watch the fucking movie."


	4. Chapter 4

She's on the floor, long tan legs splayed out in a v-shape with her hands on her thighs, facing out the window. Her head is between his knobby knees and her hair, mostly dry now, is pulled into a loose tail in his left hand while he brushes out the tangles with his right.

The sky is glowing purple-orange from light pollution in the heavy fall of snow. Their mailbox is already wearing a little white conical hat and the flappy thing is probably frozen in place from the sleet earlier. There is no way in hell either of them is getting the car out of the driveway in this mess. They are officially snowed in.

"Feferi had to cancel. She called while you were in the can."

"Damn."

"Yeah." Jade sighs. "The plows will be out before morning. We could go to her place instead."

"Dude," he frowns. "I don't want to ruin your romantic plans or anything, but her lusus already killed me once. I'm not in any hurry to be in the same room with it again." 

"Fine, pussy, we'll go get some pizza and come back here."

Jade makes it sound like she's giving in, but secretly she's just a little bit skeeved out by Gl'bgolybb herself. Even in the horrorterror's present miniature state, securely tucked into a small rainbow coral at the bottom of Feferi's aquarium, all those drifty white tentacles give Jade the creeps. 

"Sounds like a plan." 

Sollux begins picking gently at a snarl by her temple. He has laid out a surgeon's array of haircare tools: a paddle brush, a comb with a pick end, a pile of wood hairsticks and pins, and a little basket full of scrunchies and colorful elastics. The latter mostly features red and blue items, since he's the one who collects all the grooming shit. Like some kind of mutant alien magpie. 

He takes care not to pull too much as he untangles the knot and finger-combs it smooth with a growl of triumph, running his fingers across her scalp under the mass of silky hair. His hands are cold but gentle. She leans into one knee and looks back up at his upside-down face as he adjusts his grip, chooses another problem spot, and begins to loosen another tangle with endless patience. Times like this, bending forward with his too-shaggy fringe hanging down over his eyebrows, mouth a thin line of concentration and his new eyes just a little bit illuminated, he could almost pass for calm. 

Jade wonders, yet again, how a guy with a hair kink can still go around looking like he cut his own in the dark with dull garden shears. She's asked him to let her at least even it up in the back where it sticks out like a third set of horns (it really doesn't do much for him in the looks department), but after the Bald Spot Incident she is not surprised that he never takes up on the offer. Of course he was still blind at the time, but Karkat's howls of glee upon seeing the results of Jade's handiwork more or less spoiled any shot she had of concealing her mistake. If only he'd taken the hat she'd tried to foist off on him...

"Have you ever gone out with someone who had short hair?" she asks.

"KK," he says after a moment's thought. "ED when you were auspisticizing for us."

"Doesn't count if you don't boink."

"Bigot."

"So, who else?"

"AA and FF." He thinks a bit more. "And whatever you and me are."

"Romantic rivals." 

"As if. FF's only with you because you can find the glubbing G-spot."

"She's only with _you_ because you can do a French braid."

"We'll have to call it a tie." Sollux releases his handful of tamed hair and she feels it slip back down behind her, heavy and smooth and warm. "Done."

"Not going to braid it?"

"Nope. I like it loose."

"Says the asshole who's never shut his hair in a car door." Jade stands up and stretches out her arms. Sollux begins putting away his little hair kit.

"Fair enough. AA did that once and it kind of sucked. Well, a temple wall collapsed on it, but same difference. That was back when we were both kids. She found these ruins. I had to cut off like six inches after we got her loose. It was totally mangled." He looks a little traumatized at the memory. "I made her braid it back after that. Told her it made her look like Lara Croft from Troll Tomb Raider."

"I guess I'll stay away from mysterious ruins, then. How do I look?" she strikes a pose, shaking her mane back so it brushes the backs of her knees. This never fails to drive him crazy.

"Like you only get a three-second head start. Three...."

"Oh, come on, I just got out of the shower--"

"Two..."

"ARGH." Jade bolts from the room and Sollux doesn't even bother to say "One" before he's on his feet and after her.

Being snowed in isn't all bad.


	5. Chapter 5

Winter really digs its teeth in as December goes on. The snow from the November storm is off the sidewalks and roads and piling up in vacant lots where the trucks dump it, but it’s not melting and more’s on the way. She makes him put on mittens and a scarf and wool things to cover his hands (what the fuck) and he puts up with all of this, but he balks at the jacket. She calls him a dumbass and bullies him into the puffy black and yellow sleeves and zips it up for him, and he bitches for ten minutes about how it feels like he’s been rolled up in bubble wrap.

“Trolls have bubble wrap?” 

“We invented it, moron. You’re welcome. Now let’s go on your stupid twice-fucked walk around the block and get it over with.”

She rolls her eyes and they’re green, too green for anything Alternia could have spawned. When he was blind KK told him they were green like the local grass, and now he can see again and it’s true. When the trolls first came to Earth they appearified in the middle of a city park at noon on a sunny day in late April. 

It was all silent wonder for the trolls as they took in their first view of the world they’d created. Well, it was silent for about three seconds before KK threw himself across John and knocked him yowling and squawking to the ground, getting smears of smelly Earth vegetation and dirt all over their knees and the palms of their hands. It turned out KK thought the sun was about to fry them and was trying to save Egbert’s life.

So much for that kismessitude, bro, he remembers thinking.

“It’s this or freeze,” Jade tells him, yanking the zipper back up before he can wiggle free of the coat, and he puts up with it because Jade does not fuck around when she uses her Lusus Glare. 

When they get outside and the wind hits, he sees why she packed him into so much fabric. Two minutes down the block he’s whimpering in pain because apparently Earth Winter is the worst cold anyone could ever experience, ever. It goes right to his bones and there’s four points of stabbing ice pick agony driving into his skull and brain like a reverse migraine. When she decides he’s not just whining for no reason like usual, she takes off her left glove and pokes one of his horns with a flushed-pink fingertip. “Yeah, okay, these things are like ice cubes. Your brain is going to freeze retarded.”

They go all the way back to her apartment and he lets her shove this beastly thing over his head without a single protestation. It’s this horrible soft fluffy pink thing with earflaps (earflaps!) and a pompom (WHY?) but it keeps his horns from cracking from the hideous freezing wind. 

His new eyes don’t freeze, so there’s that. He makes a mental note to drink all her Mountain Dew and not even replace it later.

“You people live like this for six months?” He can barely believe it. No wonder they’re so useless and soft. They must spend all their time huddling around heating elements and praying for an early spring.

“Yes, Sollux. That’s what the coats and gloves are for.”

“How do you stand it?” He’s shivering. “I can see my fucking breath, oh my god. What is wrong with your planet. How can anything be this grubfucking cold, it’s ridiculous.”

She lets him go on like this for a while as they walk down the street. It was hard enough getting him to leave the apartment once the leaves started to turn. Trolls are weird about seasons, apparently. But after the third time she hears the word “un-fucking-believable” she has to break into the diatribe.

“Captor,” she says. “Captor. Shut the fuck up, Captor.”

“What?” he glares at her. His mood is snippy today and he has clearly decided Jade is the author of all his suffering. She shooshpaps him on the cheek and he immediately quits hissing and growling like a spiky-furred alley cat. 

“Sorry.” he says, and for fuck’s sake, now he’s started moping. She goes for the other cheek this time and he finally zips it. He has come to respect what she refers to as her Earth Human Pimp Hand.

“I have bad news,” she says. “It’s going to get worse.”

“Worse than this? How can anything be worse than this?” he is alarmed and beginning to panic. “This is fucking unspeakable. This is hell. You’ve dragged us into hell, you fucking human, and it gets worse?”

“Yup.”

He glares. “How?”

Jade puts an arm around his shoulder (going up on her tiptoes) and gives him a courage-inspiring squeeze. It’s only half-sarcastic. Then she leans in, all pink cheeks and glasses and those grassy green eyes, so close he can smell the peppermint of her breath as well as seeing it in billowing silver clouds, and she drops her bomb.

“Wind chill.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **_In which Becquerel, a Dog, Goes to War with a Powerful Demon for the Sake of His Beloved Jade, A Human-Puppy of Great Importance but Negligible Fangs, and Bests the Demon Without Even Biting It Once_ **
> 
> Or,
> 
>  **_Grrrrrrrrrr_ **
> 
> **_\----------------------------------------_ **

You spot the monster long before your Jade-Human seems to notice anything is wrong. You sense the creature first as a void in the darkness, as tall as the Sollux-Human ( _Human_ is your word for _food-bringer_ , even the ones that are gray with sharp pointy parts on their heads where any reasonable dog would keep his ears).

Your vision relies heavily on detecting motion, but it's dark and your eyes work the best in the dark. Even though the creature is standing still as another dog sizing you up and deciding whether or not to fight, you know it's there. You can hear the sound of footsteps and paw-padding bounce back off it. Your ears are very keen, and compensate for your poor vision. The creature probably thinks it can hide if it stays still, but you are alert and ready. Your heart thumps with a rush of adrenaline.

You do not know what adrenaline is, because you are a dog, but your fur instantly rises into a ridge along your back. You are bigger and thus more dangerous. The creature would be a fool to take you on. You lower your head so your standing up fur is even bigger.

You let out your first low, dangerous growl. It says _stay back. I bite._

Jade-Human looks down at you in a rustle of hair and gives a soft questioning bark that tells you she has no idea you are being hunted. You are glad to be here to protect her with her inferior senses and her terribly dull fangs. You love Jade-Human and the food she gives you. Visions of flashing rocks from space and fouled diapers flicker through your head, half-remembered. You will die for her if you have to. You've done it before. You are fairly certain of this.

The sound of your warning comes back ringing and softly pinging, like barking into the food-box when Jade-Human opens it to take hot excellent smelling meaty things out and put them on high tables so you can't reach to eat them. (Sometimes you bring the meaty things down from the table with your flashing light and sometimes you let Jade-Human keep it for herself and the Sollux-Human.

Usually when you surrender the meat it is because it starts to glow blue and white and Sollux-Human barks his Bad Dog Worst Lusus bark, and you decide it's not worth the effort. Making Sollux-Human fly around while he makes you fly around and things crash to the floor means Jade-Human takes you back to the island and you have to stay with Gamzee-Tavros-Human while she cleans the place up. You don't know where she puts Sollux-Human to punish him.)

The creature with the metal bark-echo does not move. Your fur hurts, it's so stiff and bristly. It's like the worst other dog at the park has decided you stink and its pack leader-Human isn't paying attention to its terrible manners and you have to go flashy and let the other dog run through you and into wherever things go when you get annoyed with them.

Jade-Human looks down at you, at the creature, and back at you. Her body is loose and friendly-slouched. She makes the uncertain bark again, and stops walking. How can she not see? It's right there!

You dip your head lower and growl again, putting some real bass into it. This time there is no word translation for the noise you make. It's the noise of torn-out throats and hot blood. That should do it.

The creature stands solid before you, undeterred.

You can't handle this.

 _Bark?_ Jade-Human says, and sees the creature at last. Her body goes to stiff alertness but the noise she makes is the "Becquerel just got into a terrible situation and ended up in physical indignity" bark-whine-yip sound that means nothing to you whatsoever. _Hah hah hah_ it goes, through her short snout and open mouth, then makes the _nothing is wrong_ noise that always makes you twice as vigilant.

Is she _rabid,_  making all this comfort-noise right in front of the monstrous _thing_ that's appeared on your lawn?

This _thing_ that is not afraid of you.

And she starts moving again, walking closer. You are right by her side, ready to fight the very minute the thing springs at you. She is stupid but she is also soft and helpless without her loud rifle, which is the best thing for playing fetch, but you don't have time to wag your tail and play right now.

You are very upset when you get close enough to see it properly. The creature is large and gray and its body is straight, with edged marks and patterns sharply displayed on the front of its four-pointed body, but it has no eyes. You are certain it can see you, somehow, and that makes your lip rise to a wrinkle over your sharpest teeth. No dog has ever seen these teeth and held its ground, but this thing does. 

You notice something else, too.

The thing is _flat_. It's flat and wide with nothing but one angular front-side with markings. There's nothing else there. Like an ear standing up straight that's just thin when the other dog turns to run away yelping. It's just a slice of monster. 

For the first time in your long, long life, you feel fear. How is this awful, painfully wrong creature even possible? Where does it keep its fangs and claws? It surely _has_ them. You're a dog. You know these things. But you can't see where they are. It could be one big fang, ready to bite you.

The fear chews on your soft parts from the inside, a need to put your tail down low and run. Then the dog mind stops showing its belly and you feel shame for even thinking about absconding. You have a Jade-Human to save, even if she is foolishly leading you toward the monster. 

Then you see something even worse. Maybe even the worst thing of all.

The monster's legs are long and thin and they disappear into lumps on the grass, like huge deformed paws. The paws are facing different directions and have ragged edges and look too heavy to walk with. There aren't even any talons.

It's terrible. _Terrible_. 

If your bitch ended up with something like this in the litter, you would eat it and try again. It's just wrong, deeply and alarmingly wrong. 

You are very upset now and your growl swells to a long, dragging rumble, just this side of a snarl. Your guts go cold and you prepare to bite every sharp edge of its body. _Jade-Human, get away. This is so, so dangerous._

Your dog mind takes over again and you forget to flash her away from this place. All you want to do is battle the demon.

But you _can't_. It's looming up now, higher than the wall along the path where you piss every night. Speaking of which. You keep your eyes locked on the creature as you wet the side of a tree. Your lifted leg isn't trembling, not a bit.

Then you remember you're about to die, and your pee shuts off before you can finish.

Jade makes the _hah hah_ noise again and you catch yourself slinking behind her, all your bravado and pride gone. You hide behind her skirt and want to disappear into space from the shame of it.

She barks again, which sounds like the reassurance-bark despite the fact that your death is standing right there taking its sweet time killing you both.

She reaches a hand toward the creature, making the soothing growl-hum-whine again. 

She _touches_ it.

She _touches_ it, and it _doesn't attack._

You peek your head around her leg for a better look. She uses her other hand to make the come-closer wag that means there's food.

Bullshit there is. But she's Jade-Human, so you give up on any hope of ever curling up again on your warm spot on the bed beside where you and she and Sollux-Human den each night. You pull your body down low, barrel chest brushing the withered December grass, low enough to keep your belly safe from biting and slashing. Your tail is tucked tight, hugging your reproductive area, and your ears go flat against your skull to protect them from being bitten through.

You crawl forward, miserable, to where her hand rests on the monster's awful flat front.

The weird paws are close enough now to bite, but your teeth are clamped together to hold back a puppy whine. You may have just lost a battle with a hell-demon, but you're going to keep hold of some of your dignity no matter how badly your death hurts.

 _It doesn't attack._

Is it not hungry? Is it asleep?

It has to be asleep. Maybe there's still hope for the two of you.

Jade-Human's new bark makes no sense to you, a mix of reassurance and Silly Dog and those soft _hahhing_ noises again. Her bark goes "ohbecseriously," whatever the stale kibble _that_ means.

You inch closer. Her hand slides down the thing's unnaturally straight left leg and she pats the paw-thing that has broken your grip on reality. It makes a dull thwup sound. You hear things gritting inside the paw.

Jade-Human barks, hahhing even louder. Her body says she is showing you something amazing, which is a lie. You know this is doom on two spindly ugly legs.

You swallow your fear and give the paw a sniff.

It smells like beach dirt. 

What the _fuck_.

You back away, showing the whites of your eyes, overwhelmed. 

How is this thing made of _beach dirt._

You can't take this. You just cannot take another single moment of this. Your mind hurts and you don't want to think about it any more. You need to poop and you are now very upset and you might not even be able to finish peeing because of this weird blight on reality.

You want it to go away. It wasn't here yesterday, and it shouldn't be here now. This is your territory. You've marked it every day for months. This thing is trespassing. 

Wait. Wait.

You can make it go away.

You gather up your courage, bring the flashing out of you and send the awful thing, beach dirt paws and diamond-shaped flat body and all, somewhere far far away. 

"becyoubaddogthatbelongstothecity!"

You whimper, reduced to puppyhood at last by the Bad Dog growl from your Jade-Human. You have now officially lost all your cooldog points. You hang your head and feel your fur go flat and small. You are now the most miserable creature in the history of the universe. You should know, you've been here just about from the start of it.

Then she hand-licks you across the head, digging her fingers into the fur behind your ear where it always itches for a petting. She sigh-whines and you feel better.

She walks you past the empty place where you banished the creature. It smells like ozone where you opened the world and shoved it through. You pass a bush and don't have the heart to piss on it.

You are the worst dog. The very worst. You should never have been allowed to--

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Under the bush.

There.

What's that smell. What on earth is that smell?

You.

Found.

A.

Bunny.

  
\----------------------------------------

  


**_EPILOGUE:_ **

It takes Jade ten minutes to get the rabbit back down from where you're floating its panicking, thrashing body around like a terrified bird. She puts it back in the bush, and the delicious smell of terror and warm delicious living blood darts away. She _noes_ you over and over again until you stop staring at where the bunny vanished back under the bush.

You are disappointed but not really. Once it stopped moving the law of dogs says you'd have to eat it, and it looked kind of stringy. Plus floaty rabbit fur always sticks to your gums anyway. 

You follow Jade-Human on the rest of your patrol, blissfully eliminating wherever your nose tells you the ground needs marking, and you are the happiest dog ever and you have never been anything else. Not even five minutes after your life and the life of your Human was basically forfeit to the eldritch abomination, you are completely invincible and always have been.

  
\----------------------------------------

  


_**EPI-EPILOGUE:** _

"Where the FUCK did this thing come from?" Karkat Vantas shouts, climbing to his feet. He is naked except for one sock. His ass hurts from where it hit the floor when the bed threw them off. This was not the pounding he was looking forward to, and he is incandescent with rage. The words ROADWORK AHEAD mock him from where the orange construction sign has taken up residence on the bed.

"Did you see any green lightning?" John, ever prudish, pulls the displaced comforter over his naked body. Karkat makes a face. There is going to be lube all over the fucking blanket now.

"No, I had my eyes shut. I'm going to kill that goddamned dog."

"It's pretty funny, though, when you think about it."

"Yes, John, it's hilarious. Look at me, I'm shitting clowns from both eyesockets. What the hell are we supposed to do with this thing?"

"We could put it with the others," John suggests. "I think there's some room in the closet."

They drag the road sign off the bed and John disposes of it while Karkat drops the sandbags on the floor with four dull thuds. He'll throw them out the window or something tomorrow, maybe hit Dave on the street if he gets lucky.

"Can we change the sheets before we get back to it?" John asks. "There's still sand all over my side."

"I'm going to fucking  _kill_ that dog," Karkat says again, and internally weeps for his lost hard-on.


	7. Too Goddamned Drunk For Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade and Sollux over-indulge at the bar and show up at Feferi's apartment for a polypale booty call.

The second she opens the door they swing in laughing, drunk off their asses and all tangled up in each other.

He's got one hand down her pants and the other in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her throat. She has several hickeys, and they look fresh. She's got both her hands on his face and is using her fingers to pull his mouth into a distorted O that shows all his teeth. They're wearing each other's glasses. Feferi rolls her eyes.

"Let go of my ass!" Jade keeps telling Sollux. It comes out "Leggomaff."

"Gnak!" he retorts. It comes out mostly spit.

"Not until you let go of my ass!"

"What in Cod's name is wrong with you two? It's after midnight!"

"Hiiiiiiiii, Feferi!" Jade manhandles Sollux through the open door to Feferi's tiny apartment, steering him like a scarecrow on wheels, still with her fingers tucked into his distorted cheeks. He makes a noise that sounds like a drowning cat in belated greeting. Feferi plucks his hands away from Jade and he promptly jerks free of her grasp and gives them each the finger. Jade goes up on her tiptoes and licks one of his horns. He whimpers through his nose. It sounds absolutely disgusting.

"This asshole keeps trying to deflower me in a public hallway." Jade gives Sollux's head an emphatic shake. "Can I use your trident?"

"Nngff mng!"

"You are such a liar!"

"Get in here and shut the door before the neighbors start carping," Feferi intercepts Sollux's left hand on its way back down to the waistline of Jade's jeans and holds it firmly at chest level. "Stop that."

"Khagn." 

"You too, Jade. Let him go."

"Aw."

It takes a few seconds for everyone to get separated. Predictably, they turn on her the moment their standoff ends. Sollux, bizarrely, seems to just want a big sloppy pointy hug and peck on the cheek. Jade slips her the tongue and Feferi tastes nightclub and cherry chapstick and starts to move into the kiss before she remembers she's in scold mode and shoos them both away. They all end up on the couch, more or less upright, with Sollux in the middle. He immediately melts against Feferi, and Jade throws her legs over him and makes herself comfortable.

"You two smell like a glubbing brewery! What happened?"

"Ask him!" Jade points at Sollux.

"Don't ask me shit, I'm drunk!" He pushes himself away from Feferi and points his own finger right back at Jade for a moment, then slumps back down. His chin digs into her shoulder, arms wrapped around her. He inhales. "God, you smell good."

"He's drunk," Jade explains to Feferi.

"That's what I just said!" he shoots back, then shifts back to mumbling into Feferi's hair. "FF, FF, dude, you have these freckles, did you know? Get a pen. I want to play connect the dots."

"You're just going to draw dicks on her." Jade crosses her arms over her chest. "This? This is what I get for taking you to a bar."

"What? No! I liked that bar. We should go back. FF, do you want to go dancing at the bar with us? They have this one where people just move their asses. It's an ass dance. You have to try it, you have the biggest ass in the room. Don't waste it on this couch."

Feferi pets him on the head like a fussy wiggler and he burrows his face into her shoulder, half-lying across the cushions with both his feet slowly sliding off the edge and toward the floor under the weight of Jade's legs. Her skirt is riding up.

"You're not going anywhere, stupid." Feferi tells him sternly. "You're going to drink some water and take some aspirin and sleep this off. How much did you even drink?"

"All of it," Sollux's voice is a muffled vibration spreading across her sternum. He sighs. "I was collecting the little paper umbrellas they put in the glasses. You can open and close them. It was awesome."

Feferi turns to Jade. "How much did he drink?"

"A bottle of Captain Morgan, two of those red and blue girly drinks that come with decorations, and two beers." Jade frowns. "I had the Roy G. Biv jello shooter special and a Mai Tai. I was trying to cheer him up. We got carried away."

"It worked, though," Sollux turns his head against Feferi's chest and looks up at her with glazed-over, half-closed eyes while she scratches the short coarse hair at the base of his horns. "I am so happy. I love absolutely everything. We need to go back."

Feferi leans back and looks at her dark ceiling. "All right," she decides, "Here's how this is going to go. Sollux, you take the couch. Jade, you're with me. In the morning I kill you both."

"Sold," Jade gives Sollux's thigh a light smack. "Get comfy, lush."

"I love you," Sollux says. "I really really love you. And I love this couch."

"If you puke on it, I will cull you." Feferi gives him a squeeze. "Take off your shoes."

"The shoes stay on. I love my shoes," Sollux protests. "And Jade's shoes. I want shoes like Jade's. All sparkly and red. Or sparkly and white. Red and white. I'll get two pairs and wear one from each pair."

"Not red and blue?" Feferi begins pulling his shoes off while he's distracted.

"Fuck blue. I am too goddamned drunk for blue."

Feferi gets him undressed and he curls up on the couch. Jade brings in a trash can with a liner in case he has to throw up. "If you puke on anything that is not this trash can, you will die horribly."

"Again?"

Jade winces. "Sorry."

"I was just fucking with you." His words are slurred. "I'll be good."

Feferi checks her lusus and finds her comfortably tucked up in the terracotta goldfish shelter at the bottom of the tank, tentacles waving gently. None of the guppies are dead, so she hasn't glubbed from the surprise of having their night's sleep interrupted. She sprinkles in a few flakes of dried beef just in case, then goes to lock the front door. If Sollux tries to wander off in his current condition, she'll hear the squeak of the misaligned deadbolt and catch him before he can abscond. 

Jade disappears for a few minutes and comes back in just her underpants, looking woozy and smelling of mouthwash. She runs her hands along Feferi's shoulders and tries to draw her closer, but Feferi shakes her head. "Too sleepy for me, too drunk for you," she says. "Lights out, please."

"Good night, Captain Morgan," Jade tells Sollux, but he's out cold and already snoring with his hands tucked up under the couch pillow. His crooked fangs poke out over his lower lip, making him look a tiny bit stupid. "Feel better."

Feferi shuts off the light in the bedroom and settles into bed so she's pressed against Jade's warm bare back. She pulls her close, her skin craving more contact with that strange and wonderful human blood-heat. 

Jade shivers a little. "Woo, cold."

"Not for long," Feferi says, and kisses her favorite spot, a tiny brown birthmark right between Jade's shoulder blades. "Will you have a hangover? People always get hangovers in the movies."

"Probably," Jade says. "I apologize in advance for the whining twofold tomorrow morning. This has been such a shitty week."

"Are the dreams still bad?" Feferi asks. Hers have never bothered her, but she's an exception among the former players of the game.

"Yeah." Jade shrugs. "Getting better, though."

"I'm glad." Feferi's voice goes soft. "You're good for him, you know."

"You're good for both of us," Jade says, speaking slowly and carefully so she won't slur. "Sorry we crashed here without calling."

"Hush. You're always whelkom here." Feferi gives her a squeeze. "Even if you're both silly."

"Love you."

"You too."

They fall asleep like that.


	8. Royal Decree

Predictably, the bed is full of nerds when Feferi wakes up the next morning.

Jade is draped over her chest, bare-chested and magnificently tan the way humans get, buried under a tangle of oil-black hair that goes everywhere. She sleeps on it, sometimes, gets wound up in it like a shawl and can't move without yelping when she wakes. Feferi smiles and brushes the overlong fringe to one side of Jade's sleep-smooth face, admiring her pink lips and slightly protruding front teeth, her closed eyes. A bar of hazy just-this-side-of-dawn light seeps in under the blinds. It's movie-perfect and lovely.

She really has the most remarkable eyelashes, Feferi thinks.

Behind Feferi is a familiar series of soft beery half-snores--Sollux, who has at some unknown point during the night wandered in and added himself to the snuggle pile. She knows without turning around that he is biting his lip in his sleep, that his free hand (the one not buried under her, how did that even get there) is clenched even now in a fist. The pitiable jerk has both bony knees tucked up against the side of her left leg. He's still fully dressed from the night before and very warm against her naked skin.

She is not getting out of this tangle anytime soon, but there's nowhere she needs to be right now, so she doesn't mind. She closes her eyes and lets her mind wander, over memories, over last night's dreams, sorting out her plans for the day. She thinks it would be nice to take a walk in the park with Bec. She never tires of skating a flying canine amusement platter through the air, watching the silly little lusus teleport to catch it, and miss anyway. He is the most amusing creature. He has killed virtually no one, a feat Feferi cannot boast in relation to her own (recently miniaturized) custodian.

Maybe they'll have pancakes. She'll do the flipping, Jade will corral Sollux and they will gang up to make him eat them. They'll all discover, for the hundredth time, that peanut butter is the best thing in the universe to put on pancakes and gorge themselves wild on syrupy carbohydrates until that mysterious inner switch is flipped that changes the act of eating pancakes from orgiastic romance to nauseated misery. They will suffer together. It will be a wonderful morning.

Lips brush the back of her neck a moment after the snoring stops. She squirms a little, letting him know she's awake, not wanting to wake Jade.

"I dreamed I went blind again," he tells her in a whisper. "ED was there and you were charging him with your double trident."

"I was stupid to do that," she whispers back, "Sorry for the bad memory."

"You were fucking magnificent," he says, and pokes that spot behind her ear with his tongue. She giggles, unable to hold it back, and Jade's head shakes a little where it's pillowed on her breast. She doesn't stir. "It's just... you were the one I thought would outlive us all. Especially me."

"I'd settle for another thirty sweeps at best if it meant avoiding another hole through the thorax, if that's all right."

"No complaints here," Sollux assures her, running one blunted claw very gently down the curve of her back. It's like a thousand little muscles there all take turns tensing up around his touch, deliciously sensitive. "It looks good on you. Unbroken skin."

"I suppose." She yawns. 

"Do you ever dream about it?" he asks, lips moving against the nape of her neck. "The game?"

"Sometimes." She turns her head and looks back. His face is pale and too thin. She's going to make him so many pancakes later. "I dream about Jack a lot. Karkat's Jack as much as Jade and the others' one."

"He was so screwed up over that," Sollux's finger stops tracing her back for a moment. "He thought they were going to be the two mutants on our team until everyone else stepped in to doublecross Jack and get the ring."

"He never told me."

"You never stuck around on sleepless nights. He talks about it sometimes. That fucking game."

"It's good he's got John." Feferi watches the lights in his strange eyes dim, and realizes too late that she's said the wrong thing. Sollux says nothing, just traces indecipherable lines down her back. Writing love poems in some strange romantic language that only fools and the terminally unhappy can understand, maybe. She has no idea how to respond to his silence.

"Nobody says he has to be in your flushed," she finally says. "You need a moirail if you're not going to let me or Jade do it."

"Nah," Sollux says, and gives a soft chuffing laugh that's mostly air. It tickles the little hairs on the back of her neck. "Kiss of death. I'll take my freedom."

"Gloomy."

"Well yeah, didn't you get the memo? Sollux plus hangover plus life equals a black hole of howling bullshit, film at eleven."

"Gloomy and a jerk."

"Whatever. I'm just saying, I like the way humans do all their quadrants at once. This kind of glorious pheremone clusterfuck would have given your Ancestor a conniption fit."

"So it's all about spite for the Condesce?" She slips a hand back behind herself, under the sheet, and feels around for the zipper of his jeans. "Nothing to do with... this?"

"Rude. Unhand me, Empress," he growls into her hair. "My head is seriously killing me."

Feferi just grins. "That would fall into the "your own fault" category."

"I am invoking the Vantas Defense. Take it up with past me."

"Your objections are noted," Feferi smiles sweetly. "Now off with the pants, and that's an order from on high."

"You sound like Terezi. This bed is not large enough for legal role play."

"Are we molesting Sollux now?" Jade mumbles groggily, her green eyes half-lidded. Her hair is everywhere. "Can that be a thing?"

"Screw you both. I have a headache."

"And we outnumber you." Jade gives Feferi's left nipple a completely unnecessary and very lingering lick. Her hand moves around under the sheets between Feferi's legs. "Sorry to say, but your brain never stood a chance. Surrender now or we enter the perilous realm of dubcon."

"Fuck is dubcon?" 

"Ask Nepeta," Jade says, and waggles her eyebrows. "I need morning sex, argument over."

"How are you even like this two seconds after you wake up?" he complains. "You drank as much as me."

"Practice," Jade mimics his put-upon tone, rolls her eyes and slides one finger up inside Feferi, teasingly light the way she knows she likes it. "Mmm. Maybe we'll just ignore the whiny idiot entirely. What do you think?" 

In answer, Feferi lets out a moan that is only mostly for show, eyes locked on Sollux's, daring him to call her out for faking. She rocks her hips just a little as Jade shifts around and begins kissing her way down Feferi's belly, each kiss a bit wetter than the last. They're both moaning excessively now, fucking with him so completely it deserves some kind of medal. 

Feferi brushes the tangled mess of Jade's hair back over her shoulder so they can both watch. Somehow his arm betrays him and he finds his hand sliding down between Feferi's legs, covering Jade's. They both giggle and Jade rubs her thumb along the back of his hand.

The hand the Empress has down his pants, stroking him, makes the final vote three to one in favor of hangover sex. Life is not fair.

"Oh god damn it," he groans. "There goes my virtue."

"As if!" Jade snorts. "Get in there, whiner."

Later, they destroy the kitchen trying to make pancakes.


End file.
